May 2006
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Media Lens: Silence in the Service of Power
In November last year, as many as 24 Iraqi civilians – among them 11 women and children – were killed by US marines in Haditha, western Iraq. The New York Times has described the atrocity as possibly “the gravest case involving misconduct by American ground forces in Iraq”. Initial US army reports had suggested the… Continue reading
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Sitting in the house that Capital built By William Bowles
What an irony therefore, that with the ‘triumph’ of Capital, everything ends up being identical, from the rural backwater of Braga to the malls of Porto. Pizzahut Rules, Okay! Continue reading
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Dig a deep hole and then lie out of it By William Bowles
Guimarães used to be a centre of the Portuguese textile industry but like many other industrial areas of Europe the manufacturing got relocated to sweatshops in Asia or Latin America, so with the help of lavish EU funding, the place has been transformed into yet another ‘heritage’ site and the neighbourhood in which I found… Continue reading
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Tony Blair’s Pet Bulldog? The Curious Case of Colonel Tim Spicer By William Bowles
20 May 2006 Tim Spicer (right) is an ex-soldier from the Scots Guards, an elite unit of the British Army, a veteran of Northern Ireland (where he got his OBE) and the Falklands, and he also served in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. Spicer’s (defunct) company, Sandline International took over from Executive Outcomes (EO) which was Continue reading
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Media Lens: Ridiculing Chavez – The Media Hit Their Stride – Part 2
In Part 1 of this alert we showed how the mainstream media have been united in depicting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as an extreme, absurd and threatening figure. In essence, the public has been urged to consider Chavez beyond the pale of respectable politics. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Ridiculing Chavez – The Media Hit Their Stride – Part 1
16 May 2006 — Media Lens Controlling what we think is not solely about controlling what we know – it is also about controlling who we respect and who we find ridiculous. Thus we find that Western leaders are typically reported without adjectives preceding their names. George Bush is simply “US president George Bush”. Condoleeza Continue reading
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Media Lens: Notes from a Dying Planet – The Media’s Aversion To Addressing The Juggernaut of Economic ‘Growth’
Last year we reported that Michael McCarthy, environment editor of the Independent, was “taken aback” at dramatic scientific warnings of “major new threats” in the Earth’s climate system. For instance, the West Antarctic ice sheet, previously considered stable, could collapse leading to a 5-metre rise in global sea level. Continue reading
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Oh my, how things haven’t changed By William Bowles
For those readers old enough (or well up on history) what strikes one about the current situation is just how nothing has actually changed when it comes to how the media covers events of importance, especially when it’s ‘us’ versus ‘them’, the ‘us’ being white, European/American ‘civilisation’ and the ‘them’—well pretty much the rest of… Continue reading
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Alienated Masses, Alienated Media By William Bowles
The dilemma the independent media confronts is as follows: setting up shop is easy, almost too easy but unlike corporate media websites which not only have the resources to market their online presence along the length of the high street, because they also own and control traditional media; print, radio and tv, they are able… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Lining Up the Next Victims
The British media is moving up a gear in support of Washington and London’s agenda of demonising the next potential victims of western power, whether in Iran or Latin America. Consider ‘The Big Question’ posed last Thursday by the avowedly critical ‘Independent’ newspaper in London: Continue reading
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Crunch time for capitalism or how the past returns to haunt the present By William Bowles
Computers are wonderful tools—sometimes. A couple of days ago I almost got through writing this piece and inadvertently tossed the damn thing away, back-ups and all! Not having a photographic memory, I was forced to try and reconstruct my original essay which is frankly an impossibility and in any case, it seemed pointless trying to… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Maelstrom Of Vitriol – The BBC Smears Media Lens
3 May 2006 — Media Lens On April 28, BBC online published an article by David Fuller titled, ‘Virtual war follows Iraq conflict,’ (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4951320.stm) The article discussed challenges made by Media Lens and others to the website Iraq Body Count (IBC) which had released a “rebuttal” of criticisms the previous day (www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/). Continue reading
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Iraq Body Count – The acceptable face of slaughter? By William Bowles
The IBC’s John Sloboda inexcusable slur on Medialens and others such as John Pilger in the BBC interview (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4950254.stm) follows a well-established line by the so-called liberal intelligentsia who, whilst claiming to be progressive, are actually having the opposite effect; to reduce the debate to an argument over numbers rather than principle, an issue the… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 